Staff Mail
Through the London Sports bid, we successfully bid and were granted £20k worth of sporting equipment for basketball, boccia, archery and gymnastics. The purpose of the funding was to bid for sports that are not currently offered within the setting and ways that the school could be opened up to external clubs to generate ongoing revenue. Boccia will be available at lunchtimes for targeted children in the Autumn term. A gymnastics and basketball club will start in September 2023 and we are still exploring options for an archery coach.
As a result of recent anti-social gang and violence behaviour in the Morden area, with the support of Keith Shipman in the LA, we made a bid to the VRU (Violence Reduction Unit – a Mayor London scheme). Within this bid we applied for 1:1 counselling for some children who had been directly affected by the recent violence and more broadly for support in educating and supporting our community.
In response to these incidents, and as a continued commitment to our priority in contextually safeguarding our children, we managed to source a charity called St Giles that supports children through education to be proactively preventative, rather than reactive to gangs and violence.
On Monday 20th and Tuesday 21st March, St Giles delivered workshops to Years 3-6 with the focus on “Gangs” and “Weapons Awareness: Knife Crime”. The programme was tailored to these particular year groups. A Senior staff member (A Designated Safeguarding officer – DSL) was present in all workshops to support children. In addition, St Giles offered a parents’ workshop on 17th March. This session was led by a speaker with a lived experience within the criminal justice system and designed to help parents and carers identify the signs and triggers that a child or young person might be involved in county lines and gain an understanding of how to appropriately respond to such indicators.
From October to mid-January, we encouraged everyone to place tokens in the collection bins at local Tesco stores in an effort to win some monetary prizes to go towards our outdoor learning provision. Thanks to phenomenal support, we received £1500 to use towards garden planters and tents.
On Tuesday 21st February, we celebrated ‘International Mother Language Day’. Celebrated all over the world, its aim is to raise awareness of language, cultural diversity and multilingualism around the world. PLT encouraged children to come to school in either their national dress or dressed in the colours of their country’s flag. The children looked fabulous! Throughout the day, we celebrated the fantastic range of languages and cultures of the Morden Primary community, and shared a few well-known phrases in their mother language. We received many contributions of favourite recipes from Morden families, which celebrated the countries represented by our diverse community.
Another event organised by the PLT, the children asked to combine National Day of Reflection with fundraising for Syria and Turkey as a result of the devastating earthquakes. For a gold coin donation, children can wear yellow or red. In addition, a cake sale will be held after school.
Beat the Street was a popular interactive game that encouraged people to walk or cycle and was launched on the 15th March. It was designed to get communities to become more active and to make small lifestyle changes, such as walking or cycling to school or work more often. Beat the Street had a significant impact on increasing levels of physical activity among adults and children. It also helped reduce congestion, improving air quality, and helped families spend time together, exploring local green spaces. A recent update indicated there had been a 10% increase in people walking during this period.
In May we celebrated the Coronation – a historical event in all our children’s lives. The children completed a range of creative activities alongside learning about the history and importance of Coronations. We were impressed by the amazing royal themed sculptures that children across the school made from recycled material. Staff and children enjoyed a picnic, parade of outfits and some coronation cake.
In May we celebrated the Coronation – a historical event in all our children’s lives. The children completed a range of creative activities alongside learning about the history and importance of Coronations. We were impressed by the amazing royal themed sculptures that children across the school made from recycled material. Staff and children enjoyed a picnic, parade of outfits and some coronation cake.
Years 5 and 6 participated in a BREE project. This project aimed to help children understand identity, focusing initially on their own sense of self then progressing to empathy and understanding for all others in their community and beyond. It then went further to provide a safe environment for children to learn about extremism and how important it is to educate ourselves to respect each other’s differences; how dangerous it can be to form assumptions about people; how dangerous it can be to withdraw from our support network and community; how that makes us vulnerable to others with ulterior motives. All materials and activities were presented in a child-friendly and appropriate format. The project was originally created to support schools in Manchester address the Manchester Arena bombings in 2017.
Mrs Rogers continues to provide Emotional & Literacy support to targeted children.
This lunchtime club operates 4 days per week and supports children who find the playground difficult.
Jigsaw support 2.5 days per week with Laura Hold, funded by the Pupil Premium.
Through the cluster mental health group, Natalia – a counsellor from Off the Record- comes in once a week to support children and parents. She is also able to offer advice to staff.
We joined a programme which is available for schools who have high deprivation statistics that involves the delivery of bagels and breakfast cereal that we can give to the children each morning during registration. School pays 25% of the cost of the bagels, cereals and delivery associated with the programme. This is covered from School Fund by weekly direct debit.
We continue to use Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised which is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP). This SSP is developed for schools by schools and is widely used within Merton. Based on the original Letters and Sounds, but extensively revised this provides a complete teaching programme. As part of this school has invested in all the matching Collins phonics readers which provides a comprehensive range of fiction and non-fiction decodable books for use in school and at home including an online library.
The teachers in Rec-Year 2 have participated in the Mastering Number project. These year groups will continue to use the Mastering Number materials to secure firm foundations in the development of good number sense for all children from Reception through to Year 2. The aim over time is that children will leave KS1 with fluency in calculation and a confidence and flexibility with number. Attention will be given to key knowledge and understanding needed in Reception classes, and progression through KS1 to support success in the future.
KS2 classes have a daily 10-15 minute maths fluency session in addition to maths lessons, which will allow children to retrieve previously taught knowledge in order to rehearse concepts, practise multiplication facts and go through home-learning.
We continue to work with the Sustaining Work Group in order to develop and sustain our teaching for mastery approach to mathematics. Participating in the course continues to support us to refine school structures and systems to embed and sustain mastery.
During June we celebrated Cultures through the Arts with the theme THIS IS US! The week was all about gaining an understanding of each other’s cultures in order to promote peace, stability and development. Britain has benefited from diversity throughout its long history and is currently one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world.
Across the week, children in Y1-6 moved around the school to visit different “continents” to learn about the cultures celebrated in these countries and continents. They enjoyed singing, dancing, poetry writing, art, jewellery making and tasting vegemite! Did you know that Red Class has a representative from 6/7 of the world’s continents? We all agreed that no class would have someone from Antarctica so Red Class won a special prize for their diversity.
On Friday 9th June, the studio at Morden was transformed into ‘Le Café Français de Morden’. All classes had the chance to experience a bit of Parisian culture, sipping ‘jus d’orange’ and eating pains au chocolat and croissants with a little ‘confiture’ and ‘miel’. Everyone had a lovely time and showed lovely French manners as they practised, ‘Merci’ as they were served by some fabulous Year 6 helpers.
During the first week of July, year 6 took part in a TfL transition workshop. We spent time talking about safe and respectful travel on the buses, tubes, trams and trains. Mrs Torreiro was very proud that the children could respond to all of the ‘good citizen’ questions with expert answers, showing their Morden Values which they do practise whenever out on school trips. We also learnt about zip cards (all children over 11 must have a zip card to travel for free on TfL buses and with reduced prices on trains and tubes). You can apply for these online at the TfL website. Finally, we learnt about where to get help when travelling independently. Well done Gold Class for such active and positive participation in the workshop.
Year 6 spent a wonderful day at Chessington World of Adventures. Thankfully the rain had pretty much stopped by the time we arrived and the sunshine even came out by lunchtime! Which was great for some groups getting very wet on Tiger Rock, The Gruffalo Ride and a new water gun boat ride. Some brave Gold Class children went on the latest high speed, looping roller coaster, Mandrill Mayhem – and absolutely loved it! Others enjoyed the Vampire, Tomb Blaster, pupils V teacher on the bumper cars (lucky Mrs Torreiro!) and also looking at the gorgeous animals. One thing is for sure, everyone had a lot of fun.
